However, Philippine Secretary of National Defense Delphin Lorenzana recently said, “the [mutual defense] treaty needed to be reexamined to clear ambiguities that could cause chaos and confusion during a crisis.” He cited China’s aggressive seizure in the mid-1990s of a Philippine-claimed reef, saying, “The U.S. did not stop it.”
Three years after we'd been shown the door? Too damn bad. That is not, in my opinion, a grievance, it's just deserts to a government that was quite openly hostile at the time.
There is another very touchy issue involved herein, and it was one that plagued the Subic refits throughout their existence: U.S. workers would lose those jobs, and the unions were (in this case justifiably) unhappy about Filipino crane operators, for example, getting paid half or less of their U.S. counterparts. Great deal from the Navy's point of view, not so much for America First. We're angry when Silicon Valley outsources overseas for exactly that reason.
As an ex-West Coast sailor I spent many happy liberties in, er, in the Christian Science Reading Room at the corner of Magsaysay and Rizal, although I heard there were other activities going on in Olongapo but naturally never, uh, partook. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. The Filipinos are awesome, their government not so much, and their current geopolitical challenges are to a great degree their business by their desire and not ours because it would be convenient. I could be convinced otherwise but they're going to have to do the convincing, not somebody in the Pentagon.
I take your remarks as tongue in cheek but there was in fact another side to Olongapo.
I was honored to be asked to join the Olongopo Jaycees. As a young civilian engineer living with my wife at Subic, I could go off base and mingle with the real philippino population.
All of the Jaycees were pillars of the Olongaapo community. Several were in fact owners of the very clubs that attracted sailors. These young men created the business community that made Olongapo function. They also ran businesses that provided vital services needed by the Navy.
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It always struck me as important that a very American organization, the Jaycees, was important in that strange and very far off city